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Wow, way off spec so likely something has changed or bad elements. 6kw is far from 9kw ﻿

Bill - Looks like I confused the issue by posting about my own JW Good kiln that's missing the name-plate, and is somewhat smaller than the OP's .. 6kw probably is at-least a little 'below spec' on mine, since the add-on ring is labeled as 1700w but, with the plate missing on the main body, I don't know what it was originally rated. In my case 6kw calc'd at 240v would be 25amps - so a 30-amp cord seems reasonable.

Don't think the OP has actually powered his up yet - or, at-least, hasn't posted any ohm readings or calculations.. Sorry for the confusion.

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Bill - Looks like I confused the issue by posting about my own JW Good kiln that's missing the name-plate, and is somewhat smaller than the OP's .. 6kw probably is at-least a little 'below spec' on mine, since the add-on ring is labeled as 1700w but, with the plate missing on the main body, I don't know what it was originally rated. In my case 6kw calc'd at 240v would be 25amps - so a 30-amp cord seems reasonable.

Don't think the OP has actually powered his up yet - or, at-least, hasn't posted any ohm readings or calculations.. Sorry for the confusion.

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Yes, that top knob says "turn past 20 then set timer" but I don't understand why it's 0-115 if it is a timer? What measurement of time would that be? Minutes doesn't make sense to me, and hours seems excessive. I don't know about that bottom section. I'll have to run up there this evening and get pictures of the inside,I don't have any right now.

My friend ran a test fire with a cone 5 witness cone with that top knob on 100 and the timer on the kiln sitter at 20hrs, with all the knobs on high (we think, no mark to turn them to, he assumed up). It ran the full 20 hours and the witness cone was hardly bent at all. I unfortunately wasn't able to get a pic, but will do that this evening as well.

1st the ring on bottom looks like a dead ring (no elements(we have yet to know this for sure as we have yet to see inside)

Set the cone sitter with a bisque cone-you can look up this info easy on the dawson setter on the web

I would turn the 2 knobs on low with a fully loaded bisque -set the timer to 110 note the time

start the kiln-fire for 3 hours and turn the the two knobs to meduim for a few hours then turn two knobs to high and see how long the kiln goes until the sitter turns it off. note the timer time when it shuts off and then you will have the timer hours vs the odd timer numbers.I have seen odd numbers on many an old kiln-you just need to adapt to 1-10 or 110 to zero in terms of time.Yes they seem Radom but the numbers will mean something.

After doing this it will all make sense-just keep in mind this is a very old discontenued kiln and without new elements it will behave slowly in terms of firing.

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y friend ran a test fire with a cone 5 witness cone with that top knob on 100 and the timer on the kiln sitter at 20hrs, with all﻿ the knobs on high (we think, no mark to turn them to, he assumed up). It ran the full 20 hours and the witness cone was hardly bent at all. I unfortunately wasn't able to get a pic, but﻿ will﻿﻿﻿ do that this evening as well.

Here is a thought, usually when something says turn past a certain number it is often a mechanically charged item. Just for snicks I would turn it to thirty or forty and leave it. (No power applied) just to see if was a mechanical timer. After a day or so you might have an answer.

If you open the kiln control box and can take some decent pictures we likely can tell how it should work from the point to point wiring.

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I don't understand why it's 0-115 if it is a timer? What measurement of time would that be? Minutes doesn't make sense to me, and hours seems excessive.﻿

Minutes makes sense, in a general way, and suggests the timer, if turned all the way around nearly to 0, would be two hours. (No idea why there would be a two hour timer but, that would be the most likely scenario with that numbering.)

8 hours ago, Maeclectic said:

My friend ran a test fire wi﻿th a cone 5 witness cone with that top ﻿knob on 100 and﻿﻿the timer on the kiln sitter at 20hrs, with all the knobs on high (we think, no mark to turn them to, he assumed up). It ran the full 20 hours and the witness cone was hardly bent at al﻿﻿l﻿.﻿

Those 4 position knobs (High/Med/Low/Off) are the same as on my JW Good. Top is the 'active' position.

Other things to consider:

Did the top knob move at all during the time the kiln was on ? Just an off-the-wall thought, and probably a real stretch - but: Could it be that the timer is somehow wired downstream from the sitter - to allow a timed soak after the sitter trips ?

Did someone look through the peeps/vents regularly during that 20 hour test, to make sure it was actually on the whole time ? Did you, at any point, see a bright red-orange glow when looking through those peeps ?

Have you checked to make sure you're getting the correct voltage at the outlet the kiln is plugged into ? If there's a wiring or breaker problem, preventing you from getting full power - it's not going to work right even if you do figure out what the 'timer' is for.

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Open the kiln and leave the lid up or leave lid down and wear a glove and after doing next step open in 5 minutes step two flip the 2 switches to high and turn on kiln and see if all the elemnts are glowing. If not you need new ones.Pretty simple-sort of like your toaster. It either glows or is dead.

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Okay, yes, it has been looked in while on. All coils seem to work, and it was a bright orange color while running when I was there the other day. I didn't get a chance to go up there and get those pics yesterday, but I will tonight. I go every Tuesday.

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rockhopper, have you ever used your kiln? just a thought, if you count the elements in the top section, which is known to be 1700 w, can you do the math to see what the rest of it is and get a total?

it would be helpful to know how you fire yours, even though it is smaller.

I've done about a dozen rounds of ^04 bisque, followed by ^6 glaze. (^6 on the sitter usually gives me what I would call a ^5+ - that is ^5 with tip touching shelf & turned slightly under, and ^6 starting to bend.)

I generally do a pretty simple schedule for both bisque & glaze: 2hrs all on low, 2hrs all on med, then all on high 'til sitter drops. Have done some experimenting with the glaze firing, going 1hr all low, 1hr all med, 1hr top & btm high, w/ middle med., then all high 'til done (to try to even out a bit, since top & btm seem to fire cooler than middle).

Not sure counting elements would help much - but I know from my in-line meter that it's pulling just under 6kw with all switched on High.

Each 'ring' has two rows of brick, with a total of grooves (4) - but the top (add-on) ring is a single, continuous element looped thru all 4 rows of grooves, where the two main rings each have a pair of elements looped through two grooves each. The top ring does nothing on low, and pulls the same on med. that it does on high. From my limited knowledge of electrical resistance, and looking at a couple of kiln diagrams, it seems that the two main rings are running either one element, two in series, or two in parallel - depending on switch position. Since the top ring is a single element, it is either on or off. One of these days, I intend to replace the elements, at which time I'll look into re-wiring the top ring to match the other two.

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Looks fairly worn element wise. Picture is pretty tough to discern anything but two switches. Is the % timer behind the half round shield in the picture? If so there are no wires going to it. Maybe a mechanical reminder timer of some sort if it is behind there. Hope you tried winding it up past 20 and seeing if it counts down.

so lots of blank areas in this kiln as well, top, middle and bottom. I am guessing you will need new elements and all the power you can get to repeatedly fire to cone ten. As a guess, If you put new elements in it likely workable for 04 bisque and with some testing cone 6 glaze.

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The blank on the bottom is a mystery to me, my Skutt is the same size of that kiln and has always been a cone cooler on the bottom. I order elements when it starts to take longer than 12 hours to fire to C6. Last time I rewired my husband thought I was being a little hasty so he got out the meter and checked the elements. I have only had the kiln for 30 years what do I know, of course I was right they were worn out. Denice

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It looks like most of the bottom dead space is taken up with a posted round shelve.

I am with Neil-get red of the dead ring and but all new wiring and elements in kiln-bigger job as that comapany is long gone. Euclids can do the elemnts-the rest is just finding the right wire. Another thought is start with a better brand of kiln that still has parts? Becuse when you are all done you still have an Edsel